The Wolverine 2

After Logan’s runtime was increased by a whole three minutes from the version that screened for critics, we all hopped on the post-credits scene speculation. Would it tease Deadpool 2? Would it further wrap up Wolverine’s story? Would it hint at the next Wolverine-less X-Men movie? Better hold your horses, because James Mangold himself has now said that Logan has no post-credits scene after all.

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Every month (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

The first X-Men movie opened on July 14, 2000. A child born early that year would have just turned 17 by the time the tenth entry in the X-Men series, Logan, hits theaters next month. That is fortunate – viewers are going to need a driver’s license to get into this movie, which possesses the hardest R rating of any American superhero movie in history. In the past, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine would swing his razor-sharp adamantium claws and bad guys would simply fall to the ground. There was never any visible evidence of his brutality. There’s more graphic violence in Logan’s first scene – severed limbs, gruesome disembowlings – than in all of the other of the Wolverine and X-Men movies combined.

It took a while for Logan to quit the coy act and give us some footage, and now that they finally have, what a gorgeous movie it looks to be. Two new TV spots for Logan debuted today, which show off the mutant’s impaling skills and introduce us to his enemies, the Reavers.

Here at ScreenCrush, we have already done two different lists of recent trailers with sad covers of popular songs.

Unlike a lot of superhero movies, Logan seems to have kept its cards pretty close to its chest. Even though we’ve known the rough outline of the film for a while now, it wasn’t until this past week that we were finally treated to a full synopsis of the film. And while the footage we’ve seen has been enticing, it’s also been pretty carefully curated to reveal as little of the big picture as possible. In other words, James Mangold and Hugh Jackman have set the hook and now are just cruelly letting us run ourselves out.

Because superhero movies are based on comics that already exist, most of the time fans can predict roughly what a movie is going to be about with only the smallest bits of information. Logan has been particularly close-lipped about the official plot, but that hasn’t stopped us from figuring out the bare bones of it simply based on who’s involved. We know it’ll involve Caliban, because he’s, well, in it, and we also know that we’re diving into the X-23 storyline, because she’s in it too. A new, wordier summary than the one Hugh Jackman graced us with a few weeks ago has hit the Internet, and it basically confirms everything we’ve figured out.

Logan is coming out in a little more than a month, and while we don’t know the exact story yet, we’ve gotten a ton of behind-the-scenes looks and trailers and posters showing us just how different and dark this movie is going to be.

It’s been rumored for some time that Hugh Jackman’s big Wolverine farewell might very well receive an R-rating, and the massive success of Deadpool only strengthened that possibility. Up until now, however, it was unclear if Logan would actually hit theaters with an R — not for lack of trying, as both Jackman and director James Mangold have expressed an interest in delivering the red-band goods. And it looks like they’ve done just that.

The most jarring line in the new trailer for James Mangold’s increasingly buzzy Wolverine spinoff Logan comes when the gruff mutant informs his young charge, “This is the real world. People die.” He tells her this after seeing one of her vintage X-Men comic books, and informing her that the team’s actual exploits bear little resemblance to what’s on the page. It all sends a clear message: this is a film unlike the solo Wolverine pictures that came before it, distinctive both in its high stakes and self-awareness. It’s a sharply written moment, but the new clip doesn’t linger on it for too long before getting to the good stuff — in this instance, a young girl cutting off an adult man’s hands.